Transcript Slide 1
The Myth of a Well-Balanced Diet Bill H. McAnalley, Ph.D. and Eileen Vennum, RAC 1 McAnalley B.H. and Vennum E. The Myth of a Well-Balanced Diet. GlycoScience & Nutrition 2000; 1(3) 1-4. Health is related to nutrient consumption. Diseases associated with dietary deficiency and imbalance are among the leading causes of illness and death in the United States. 2 McAnalley B.H. and Vennum E. The Myth of a Well-Balanced Diet. GlycoScience & Nutrition 2000; 1(3) 1-4. Diet is known to play a critical role in coronary heart disease, many types of cancer, cerebrovascular accident, hypertension, obesity, dental caries, gingivitis and periodontal diseases, and non-insulin dependent diabetes mellitus.* *Slavkin HC. Nutrients and micronutrients: progress in science-based understanding. J.Am.Dent.Assoc.1997.128:13061313. 3 McAnalley B.H. and Vennum E. The Myth of a Well-Balanced Diet. GlycoScience & Nutrition 2000; 1(3) 1-4. RDAs are intended only for healthy populations. 4 McAnalley B.H. and Vennum E. The Myth of a Well-Balanced Diet. GlycoScience & Nutrition 2000; 1(3) 1-4. Individuals with health challenges may have a greater need for certain nutrients. Nutritional requirements vary not only from one individual to the next but from one day to the next in any given subject. They differ also with age, sex, body size, and during pregnancy and lactation.* *Barron RB. Nutrition. In Tierney LM, McPhee SJ, Papadakis MA (eds): Current Medical Diagnosis and Treatment. Stamford, Appleton and Lange; 1999:1174. McAnalley B.H. and Vennum E. The Myth of a Well-Balanced Diet. GlycoScience & Nutrition 2000; 1(3) 1-4. 5 Discussion of nutrition or nutritional supplementation has often been dismissed with the adage: “A balanced diet provides all we need to remain healthy.” 6 McAnalley B.H. and Vennum E. The Myth of a Well-Balanced Diet. GlycoScience & Nutrition 2000; 1(3) 1-4. What constitutes a well-balanced diet? 7 McAnalley B.H. and Vennum E. The Myth of a Well-Balanced Diet. GlycoScience & Nutrition 2000; 1(3) 1-4. Human genetic constitution has changed relatively little in 40,000 years.* However, what we eat and how we work have changed dramatically. *Eaton SB, Eaton SB, III, Konner MJ. Paleolithic nutrition A consideration of its nature and current implications. N.Engl.J.Med. 1985;312:203-289. McAnalley B.H. and Vennum E. The Myth of a Well-Balanced Diet. GlycoScience & Nutrition 2000; 1(3) 1-4. 8 Compared to post-agricultural people, hunter-gatherer societies consumed larger amounts of a greater variety of low-glycemic, highquality, nutrient-dense foods. These foods provided a wide variety of nutrients required for health. 9 McAnalley B.H. and Vennum E. The Myth of a Well-Balanced Diet. GlycoScience & Nutrition 2000; 1(3) 1-4. Roots, beans, nuts, tubers, and fruits were the most common dietary constituents, but others, ranging from flowers to edible gums, were occasionally consumed.* *Eaton SB, Eaton SB, III, Konner MJ. Paleolithic nutrition A consideration of its nature and current implications. N.Engl.J.Med. 1985;312:203-289. McAnalley B.H. and Vennum E. The Myth of a Well-Balanced Diet. GlycoScience & Nutrition 2000; 1(3) 1-4. 10 This diet provided a variety of phytochemicals and large amounts of vitamins and minerals. In fact, our preagricultural ancestors would have consumed most vitamins and minerals in much greater quantities than the current recommended dietary allowances.* *Eaton SB, Eaton SB, III, Konner MJ. Paleolithic nutrition A consideration of its nature and current implications. N.Engl.J.Med. 1985;312:203-289. McAnalley B.H. and Vennum E. The Myth of a Well-Balanced Diet. GlycoScience & Nutrition 2000; 1(3) 1-4. 11 Once people settled into agriculturalbased lives, they became dependent on just a few food staples, such as potatoes, rice and wheat. It is virtually impossible to get enough nutrition by eating the same few foods. 12 McAnalley B.H. and Vennum E. The Myth of a Well-Balanced Diet. GlycoScience & Nutrition 2000; 1(3) 1-4. In the transition from huntergatherer to farmer, we lost one key to good nutrition—variety* *Moran T. Diet, health and history. Diet’s role in disease is food for thought. Tex.Med. 1997;93:34-37. 13 McAnalley B.H. and Vennum E. The Myth of a Well-Balanced Diet. GlycoScience & Nutrition 2000; 1(3) 1-4. The difficulty of hunting and gathering food experienced by early humans required many more calories to sustain life. Thus necessitating both a nutrient and fiber intake considerably in excess of what’s common today. 14 McAnalley B.H. and Vennum E. The Myth of a Well-Balanced Diet. GlycoScience & Nutrition 2000; 1(3) 1-4. Our lifestyles are more sedentary. The less energy we expend, the less we need fuel in the form of calories. And the less we eat, the fewer nutrients our bodies have. 15 McAnalley B.H. and Vennum E. The Myth of a Well-Balanced Diet. GlycoScience & Nutrition 2000; 1(3) 1-4. It is estimated that pre-agricultural humans consumed roughly three times the vegetables and fruits that typical Westerners do today. Consequently, they would have had an intake of most vitamins and minerals much in excess of currently recommended dietary intake. 16 McAnalley B.H. and Vennum E. The Myth of a Well-Balanced Diet. GlycoScience & Nutrition 2000; 1(3) 1-4. The foods we eat are different in character from the foods eaten by our ancestors. While they ate foods fresh and often uncooked, in order to feed larger and larger populations, we have resorted to mass-produced food that is held longer periods of time before consumption. 17 McAnalley B.H. and Vennum E. The Myth of a Well-Balanced Diet. GlycoScience & Nutrition 2000; 1(3) 1-4. Preservatives are added so that foods can be kept for longer periods of time. Food is highly processed, removing many of the important nutrients our bodies require. 18 McAnalley B.H. and Vennum E. The Myth of a Well-Balanced Diet. GlycoScience & Nutrition 2000; 1(3) 1-4. Physicians and nutritionists are increasingly convinced that the dietary changes over the last 100 years have contributed to the increase in coronary heart disease, hypertension, diabetes, and some types of cancer.* *Eaton SB, Eaton SB, III, Konner MJ. Paleolithic nutrition A consideration of its nature and current implications. N.Engl.J.Med. 1985;312:203-289. McAnalley B.H. and Vennum E. The Myth of a Well-Balanced Diet. GlycoScience & Nutrition 2000; 1(3) 1-4. 19 Though dieticians and physicians have historically been among the first to recommend exclusive reliance on “a well-balanced diet”, many are beginning to modulate this position. 20 McAnalley B.H. and Vennum E. The Myth of a Well-Balanced Diet. GlycoScience & Nutrition 2000; 1(3) 1-4. Science has demonstrated that nutritional supplementation can indeed promote health. 21 McAnalley B.H. and Vennum E. The Myth of a Well-Balanced Diet. GlycoScience & Nutrition 2000; 1(3) 1-4. Considering what is currently known about nutrition, a “wellbalanced diet” sounds like just one more urban myth. We must pay close attention to the quality and quantity of the food and food supplements we consume. 22 McAnalley B.H. and Vennum E. The Myth of a Well-Balanced Diet. GlycoScience & Nutrition 2000; 1(3) 1-4. The solution points toward more attention to food choices and dietary supplementation of nutrients required for health. 23 McAnalley B.H. and Vennum E. The Myth of a Well-Balanced Diet. GlycoScience & Nutrition 2000; 1(3) 1-4.